1. Technical Field
The present invention pertains to the field of charging a fee for information provided over a network. More particularly, the present invention pertains to a method of handling access to information over the Internet in a way that makes feasible a quite small charge per access, and does not require the payer to have an account with the information provider.
2. Description of Related Art
There are now a number of methods that have been proposed for handling what are termed micro-payments on the Internet, i.e. payments for purchases made over the Internet. Often, as here, the term micro-payment is specialized to refer to payment for information accessed over the Internet. The designation micro-payment is used to indicate that the cost of each purchase may be as low as a small fraction of the smallest denomination of scrip in many countries, e.g. a tenth of a US penny or less.
In a May, 1997, survey of sixteen methods providing for paying for access to information over the Internet, Chris A. Owen, in his article entitled, "Internet Micro-payment Protocols," describes how the existing methods make various compromises trying to satisfy the various conflicting goals of good security, high transaction volume capacity, low transaction cost, and high transaction speed. None are stated as having achieved a superior result in the mix of these goals because of the entities the methods employ, and the roles assigned to each entity.
What is still needed is a method of charging for each access to information in a way that is secure but fast, and that keeps overhead low. One way to do this is to distribute the work involved in providing the requested information, recording the accounting details of a purchase, and then settling between the payee and payer for the purchase.